Putting down your roots

This DFW county ranks among best U.S. places to buy a forever home

Home sweet forever home.

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You’ve heard of forever homes for adopted pets. Well, we humans have forever homes, too. And a new study ranks Collin County among the best places to own a forever home in the U.S.

The study puts Collin County — whose major cities include Allen, McKinney, and Plano — at No. 8 on the forever-home list. To come up with its rankings, money.co.uk took into account these factors: rate of violent crimes, average home price, school ratings, average cost of electricity, average annual pay, and typical life expectancy.

A forever home is where you envision living for a long period.

“Unlike a starter home, a forever home has everything (or almost everything) that you might want,” Rocket Mortgage says. “For example, it may have a larger kitchen, more bedrooms, a backyard, easy access to public transportation — whatever you envision. Forever homes are more expensive but also have a higher resale value than starter homes.”

If you’re under 40, your chance of buying a forever home is under 25 percent, the Financial Samurai website estimates. Only after hitting age 50 do the odds of ending up in a forever home exceed 50 percent, according to the website.

Collin is the only county in Texas to make the top 10.

Here’s how it fares in each category of the money.co.uk study:

Violent crimes per 100,000 residents — 1,424
School ratings — A+
Average home price — $337,200
Average electricity cost per kilowatt-hour — $0.1099
Life expectancy — 82.2 years
Average annual pay — $71,246

Teton County, Wyoming, tops the money.co.uk ranking of the best places to own a forever home in the U.S.

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GP News

Grand Prairie expands to the south with new master-planned community

Rendering courtesy of Provident

Goodland Grand Prairie

The City of Grand Prairie is growing fast and expanding to make way for a new master-planned development south of US Highway 287 and along Tollway 360, in Ellis and Johnson counties.

The community development, called Goodland, is the result of Grand Prairie’s recent 1,500-acre annexation extending its southern border toward Mansfield. Overall, with the added land, Goodland will be a 5,000-acre site featuring 15,000 residences including townhomes, custom homes, and gated communities for 50,000 residents.

According to a release, it will be a “city within a city” and a 45-minute drive from Dallas-Fort Worth. Beyond housing, there will be shops, restaurants, schools, public and private event venues, regional sports fields and complexes, dance halls, churches, trail systems, city parks, ponds, and preserved green spaces.

“This is a significant step in our city’s development,” says Grand Prairie Mayor Ron Jensen in a statement. “Unlike many of our neighboring cities, we have the unique advantage of new development opportunities to our south that will drive the growth and prosperity of our city. We recognized the opportunity and took decisive action.”

Leading the development is Provident, a Dallas-based real estate firm that has created other master-planned communities across Dallas-Fort Worth, such as Preston Hollow Village and Hillstead in Collin County. Provident has plans to work nature into the space design with more than 1,600 acres of creek corridors and floodplain land.

Plans are ongoing for a centralized mixed-use walkable Town Center, complete with civic buildings and other commercial development. Further south on the property near Highway 67, light industrial uses and other private employment campuses are already underway, projects that will contribute vital tax dollars for city growth and future expansions.

“This level of placemaking is quite rare, and certainly not easy to execute, especially in a brand-new community," says Provident Managing Director Rylan Yowell in a statement. "We are committed to a long-term vision with a desire to be good stewards of the land."

A new four-lane road called Goodland Parkway will link Goodland to Grand Prairie at Tollway 360 and US Highway 287. It's set to open by December 2025.

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